Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a fishing reel, and particularly to a spinning reel that forwardly releases a fishing line.
Background Information
A spinning reel directionally moves a spool back-and-forth for winding a fishing line, and simultaneously, rotates a rotor in conjunction with a rotation of a handle. Accordingly, the fishing line is wound about the spool. The rotation of the handle is transmitted to the rotor through a drive gear. The drive gear is integrally or separately mounted to a drive shaft rotatably supported by a reel unit, and is unitarily rotatable with the drive shaft. The drive gear is meshed with a pinion gear that rotates the rotor. The drive shaft is rotatably supported by the reel unit. The handle includes a handle shaft and a handle arm extending in a radial direction from a rotational axis of the handle shaft. The handle shaft is directly joined to the drive shaft either by a combination of a non-circular engagement and a pin member (see e.g., Japan Laid-open Patent Application Publication No. 2010-273629) or by a threaded connection (see e.g., Japan Laid-open Patent Application Publication No. 2014-023432).
In each of the spinning reels described in Japan Laid-open Patent Application Publications Nos. 2010-273629 and 2014-023432, the drive shaft and the handle are directly joined. Therefore, the following situation might occur. When a load is exerted on the handle, the drive shaft might tilt. The drive gear provided on the drive shaft would then also tilt while meshed with the pinion gear. This might result in a deformation of either or both of the drive gear and the pinion gear.